Although the present invention is not limited thereto, control equipment for controlling a motor, clutch and a gear drive arrangement on a ship, for example, have been taught in the prior art. For an understanding of this type of control device, see German Pat. No. DE-PS 22 19 486.
The control device that is taught in this prior art publication consists of a mechanism which will prevent the undesirable activation of the control links used for the engagement of the clutch when the control lever remains in a position such that, in order to idle the motor for initial warmup, the motor RPM's are brought up to a point where normally the clutch would engage and thereby connect the motor with the gear drive.
This prior art control apparatus consists of a number of disk members. Such disk members are equipped with teeth and lugs which are designed to be engageable with one another during operation of the equipment. It is known that the manufacturing costs associated with this control apparatus is relatively high. In addition, the space requirements for this control apparatus are relatively large.